Ahris

An Idiot's Guide to the History of the Old Realm

I’ll clean this up, but here are my ideas thus far. And in those places I’ve left blank, go ahead and contribute what you want.

The Old Realm is….

Tens of thousands of years old. Think Star Wars-length history. And for most of that time it’s been relatively stable. The elves like stability. The Realm is ruled by a council of very old elves who are replaced on the council mostly by their chosen family members, but sometimes someone from a prominent family is elected to the council. In this respect the gov’t, at the top, is a very small oligarchy. On the broader level it’s a racial oligarchy with age, “time in service,” and traditional family and personal connections being the deciders of who holds an office. The elves make policy, decide on broad directives and laws, and run the big picture. All the fiddly details are handled by the Hehlen. The ruling council, called the Cloudwell Ascendancy, is made up of 31 ‘Paragons.’ The inner workings of this council are shrouded in secrecy and mystery to non-elves, like the Supreme Court is to regular human beings.

The Old Realm recently ended a war with….? You tell me! I figure that whatever group could wage a multi-decade war with a realm with high-level wizards and a good amount of dwarven magic items would have to be pretty tough. My sense is that the elves won, but at pretty high cost, and that this other power – very distant from Ahris – still exists. Dragons? Demons? I don’t know. The only thing feeling I have beyond those is that it will likely play little or no direct role in the game – at least not at this point (that is, this first campaign in Ahris). So if any of you would like to claim this and write a paragraph along the lines of the one above and thus stamp the history with those facts, go for it.